Submissive styles

A conversation with a friend of mine recently helped me understand one of my own concerns about the type and response to S&M play with Ganymede. She's a switch, like me, and talked about how she "flies" when she is submitting - we spent a while waxing lyrical over the deep joys of letting go, bottoming out, closing your eyes and just being done to - rather in the manner of women discussing cakes they had enjoyed eating. But in this case, our memories of pleasure were laced with current disappointments. Neither of us felt that we were giving our partners the same depth of submission, the same overwhelming sensations or crazy, head swimming, lost-from-the-universe jouissance.

I've used that word deliberately, more on gendered reactions to sex later, hold that thought. Kristeva theorised that jouissance is a type of writing that only women were capable of performing, which interested me in terms of gendered sexual expression in BDSM. Capitalising on previous theories about how men are not taught how to express their sexual side in the way that women are - with the knock-on effect that women are overly sexualised or only valued for their sexuality and men find it hard to express submissive desire because sexual availability is seen as "feminine". This leads us on to the worrying assumption that women are "naturally" submissive, and men are "naturally" dominant. A point which is bunk, pure and simple. However, this is a social perception, and it's also a reflection of how different gender roles are assigned. What this means is that it can often be easier for women to be sexually submissive than men and that whilst many men desire sexual submission it can trigger complications, including a difficulty in "properly" submitting as well as other thoughts on guilt, shame and their own masculinity.


Could it be that men find submission harder than women? Are there tools and techniques we can use to help get over these barriers? Conversation helps. As always. Communicate and try and understand not "what is wrong" but "what submission looks and feels like". It could well be that it's a simple case of different people having different experiences, however it could be that there is something deeper driving it. Gender aside, everyone responds to play differently and that we can't expect others to have matching responses to ours. Pleasure looks different in different bodies. Just as certain people are warmer or cooler on different toys, sensations and situations so too submission looks different in other minds.

Reassuring her helped reassure myself. We both worried that we hadn't been able to give our partners that experience of sub space we ourselves had enjoyed so much and felt like worse dominants for it. But being practical, I know that I am good at what I do, I'm very skilled and experienced in both practical and psychological techniques of control, pleasure and pain. I know my partner, we talk a lot and although we are still relatively knew, I know a lot of his buttons and the more we play, the better we get.

Yet, there is also another factor. Just as dominance is an art that needs to be learnt so is submission. The practice of relinquishing control and thereby generating sexual pleasure is not as innate as some people think. There is a huge gap between the fantasy of doing something and the reality of doing it - or to be more precise, having it done to you. Certainly the desire to do it has to be there in the first place, but a lot of these feelings - physical, mental and emotional - are strange when done for the first time and unfamiliar sensations take some getting used to. The more you do it, the better you get at it and the more deeply you are able to participate. Of course, like natural athletes there are people who are just born to BDSM, who melt under a firm touch or thrill to the feel of twitching flesh under their hands. Their minds and bodies need kink like fish need water. For most people, BDSM can be an exciting addition to their lives, and their sex lives, but it isn't a need, they can - and do - play every now and then with kinky things, but it's icing on the cake. For perverts, it's the cake. And the icing. And the box the cake came in. And the cake shop. 

Ganymede is new to BDSM and D/s relationships with their hurt / comfort equilibrium of power exchange, rules of living and sexual activities that emphasises these power roles. Although we have fallen very easily into this way of living, in many ways this is sometimes not helpful. Not everything we do will be as easy for him, or as "natural" as others. My own experience and desires are only useful to a point because all they really do is outline what I want and what I like. Similarly, because he is new, we have to accept - and anticipate - that he might not be the same kind of submissive as I am. 

To take a simple example, he likes verbal abuse, which I hate, he can grin and say "yes, I am a complete slut." in a way I would never have been able to do. To give a more complex one, the concept of serving me is one that he loves, wholeheartedly, especially sexual service. He is always available for me to fuck, whenever I want, for example. The physicality of this is familiar, he's had sex with people before, the difference is his ability to chose when, who and how, which is now denied to him. The denial is tempered with the fact that he wants to be used in this way. Pain, however, is still relatively unfamiliar, and not as keenly associated with desire. He doesn't have a high pain tolerance. It's something to be used sparingly, and it's something that he suffers through, because I'm a sadist...


But not that much of a sadist that I want my bottom to suffer needlessly. I'm a trainer, first and foremost and that means a reliance on the tools of carrot and stick. In order for me to enjoy what I'm doing, I need to know that he enjoying it, even if he's not enjoying all of it, or even if he is only enjoying it because of the context.
   

Sugar, money and power

Meet a Sugar Daddy Right Here Today Then Quit Your Stupid Job Tomorrow.

Google ads, wikipedia and the specialised dating websites seem to be pretty clear on the subject: Sugar Daddy relationships are about the money. So why are the people interviewed in the recent BBC article being so coy about it?

Perhaps it's a combination of the famous British reticence to talk about money and the general social condemnation of sex workers? But I think there's more going on here. At it's heart, the "it's not prostitution, really" argument reveals a belief that disparity of power creates a bad relationship. There's an unease around these situations because society tells us that they are unfair, that someone is being exploited. A little like the assumption that all sex workers must be exploited. There are also ethical hang-ups, beliefs that selling sex somehow cheapens it (I personally think that the £313 for "a date" quoted in the article is hardly cheap, especially as there's a suggestion that sex might not be automatically provided. But beyond that, sex is an activity. It's a thing that can be done. It can also be a deep and meaningful connection between people. It can also be both.

Some of the dating websites have a very BDSM vibe to them, as well the might given the explicit power exchange involved. Sugar Daddy (and Sugar Mummy, although those seem sadly rarer) relationships are based on a transaction (often termed an "arrangement") in which the older, wealthy and hence powerful partner gives financial support and offers patronage to the younger, poorer and hence weaker partner. Now, I have had forays into the world of professional dominance so I have no problem with accepting cash for sexual favours. I'm also a pervert with a fondness for D/s relationships that are neatly structured with things given and things taken so these kinds of relationships feel normal to me.

This is where it gets even trickier, because disparity of power is at the heart of many good, caring and loving D/s relationships. D/s makes overt what a lot of us knew all along. Good relationships work because they are a balance of inequalities. One party gives the same amount as the other takes. D/s enshrines that in words and principles, it makes clear things that we do not usually speak about and that can make people very uncomfortable. It's not the fact that one partner supports the other, giving things that one may lack, that creates a "bad" relationship, it's other things. Like lying, non-consensual physical and emotional abuse or being a big, damn hypocrite.

And that is the real crux of the argument. Society does not like these relationships because they reveal us to be hypocrites. We pour scorn upon these relationships yet they are a fundamental truth of how relationships work and we skip over the idea that people can get genuine enjoyment and satisfaction in relationships based on the exchange of money and power. as opposed to say, love and love alone. Don't get me wrong, love is amazing and wonderful and a many splendoured thing.

But so is being able to pay the bills.

Historically we have been more truthful, partnerships between people were partnerships between families, between countries even. Dowries indicated the transaction that was being made. Today, marriage still confers levels of social privilege and financial stability. Yet we talk about "marrying money" as if it's automatically a bad thing - as if someone would genuinely desire to "marry poverty" given the choice. Similarly, we disparage the older man who hooks up with the model (whilst also decrying her as a vapid bimbo). These relationship stereotypes have a kernel of truth that reveals society to be deeply hypocritical in how it views the value of beautiful women and powerful men - and that's without even touching on the heteronormatism and sexism revealed by beautiful women and powerful men.

No-one wants to go back to have all women as chattel (although some of us might like to play with all genders of chattel from time to time) but we must admit that we live in a world of gender inequality and it is childish to assume otherwise or to think worse of those who, honestly and openly, try to make the most of what they have got in the world. You don't like what they are doing? Then give them a world in which their options are better, in which we have other values for women and men. As long as we have a world where men are valued for their money and women for their looks then there will be men who pay to have a beautiful women on their arm.

Where have all the single men gone?

Last night saw another of my (now almost famous) failed attempts to have an orgy in a sex club. I strongly suspect that this is pretty much the equivalent of being unable to arrange a piss up in a brewery. I put it down to two main factors - the first is about my feelings in sex clubs as opposed to play clubs, the second about attaining my personal sexual and aesthetic preference.

Take the sex club / play club distinction, fortunately this club (Kinky Salon London) is one of the better clubs that blur the lines between the two, so I feel comfortable exploring my "kink" for transactional vanilla sex here. I do struggle with "stranger sex" - I am dreadfully fascinated and turned on by it: it's something I keep coming to clubs like this to try and try again. I enjoy the liberation in the idea and the simplicity in bodies, fucking. To be able to let go, bottom out, tune everything else down to white noise and just experience the sensation of other people giving pleasure to me.

The venue is lovingly decorated and everyone has fun outfits and there are smiles all round. There's dungeon kit: experimentation and playfulness is encouraged and I certainly entertained myself by tying a friend of mine down onto a rocking horse rack. However, there was no denying that the majority of activity was fucking, and without the regimen offered by D/s protocol I can find myself somewhat at a loss in what to do, and more importantly, who to do it with. Given that, I'd rather set my stall on having a lot of "just sex" - perhaps scuppering myself with expectations. In retrospect I should have kept to my natural environment and packed a bunch of toys then loitered by the rack all night doing awful things to kinksters I knew.

I'm a female top and I find it relatively easy to secure female partners at an event like this. Quite aside from the fact that there are a few women at the club that I know (some of whom I first met at the ladies only hen night, and I've become friends with since) there are far more available, interested and openly "up for it" women than men. Case in point: I strap-on within a few minutes of the playroom opening and ask who wants to be fucked. A smiling woman shouts "me!" and I help her onto the bed, fucking her whilst her female partner licked her clit. The gasps and writhing was gratifying and I enjoyed creating those sensations, the transitory pleasure of it and the act of give and take.

I started to look around for another encounter, leading Mr Smith by the hand as we walked the room. My desire was for another man for a mFm threesome. As I looked around, I saw a lot of male/female couples and a lot of women but very, very few single men, fewer still that I was interested in. The most attractive men there (and being honest, I am exceptionally picky) were with their equally attractive female partners and became quickly "busy" either with another woman or another couple. And even had they not been already engaged - and quite a few seemed to have arrangements already in place -I am uncertain what the etiquette is for approaching a couple with the intent to only fuck one of them, but suspect it's probably rude.

This lack of men is proving to be an ongoing issue for myself and Mr Smith. We initially thought that one had been located - even briefed prior to arrival, but then he arrived with a girl in tow and whilst he seemed keen in general he left early to go to another party. I'm choosing not to take this personally. So eventually, after some pleasant chats with friends we left. And I'm left with a rather worrying thought.

With the notable exception of a small number of my friends: where are all the cute, kinky single men?

Talking to Mr Smith (a classic example of my woe; attractive and we're good match, however he is married and I have no intention of fucking with that) and looking around at munches, clubs and events and you would be forgiven for thinking that the scene was entirely populated by attractive young women in fetching outfits. Perhaps it is because they are the most noticeable, but I suspect that it is, in fact, that they are more comfortable making themselves noticed - whereas single men do not. Here are some of my more general thoughts on why. Another, more worrying thought was around how the scene, and indeed how society itself, reacts to the single man: note that I'm now moving on to more broader areas and not talking about that club night superficially which actually does a damn good job of standing head and shoulders above the behaviours and attitudes of many sex clubs.

There's been a lot of conversations about the different treatment and expectations towards men and women in sex clubs and the fetish scene. There are higher prices for single men in many clubs, some clubs do not let men in until later on and there is a real wariness even amongst the nicest of young men around being "that guy". In tandem to these practical and social exclusions there is also a lack of perceived opportunity. The play balance in clubs is strongly towards girl-on-girl, girl-on-boy or girl-boy-girl sex. That's a lot of girls and not a lot of boys. I know no woman who would not play with or touch another woman and I'm not prepared to call women more "naturally" bisexual because that is a ghastly bag of assumptions. What women are, is socialised to be more bisexual - women fucking each other is is accepted to the point of expected, especially for male pleasure. Bisexual men are made invisible, or in the cases of a few ghastly swinging clubs, actively discouraged. Shame on them.

What do these two things have in common with a notable lack of available men in the scene? Well, for a start, women are occupied with each other or with known partners. I imagine that many new men will come to an event, hang around on the sidelines and then leave - unable to make a connection because of this sense of exclusion. Secondly, the various other barriers to attendance mean that many men may never make it into the scene at all until they secure a girlfriends or partner who can then act as a safety net against any potential accusations of being that guy. Add to this the difficulty that many men feel around presenting themselves as sexual anyway and I'm starting to wonder perhaps all of these potential kinky chaps are at home, fantasising about it but unable to come out and play.

Fixing femdom

A woman poses awkwardly, hand on hip, bent forward pushing her tits out. She's stood on a tropical beach in tight fitting latex, lots and lots of heavy makeup and with the kind of massive backcombed hairdo I term "Deanna Troi crack-whore". It's the kind of BDSM event flyer that I hate.

Thus far four people have waved the advert for Domme Trips at me giggling about how it's "perfect" for me. Whilst remaining out of reach of a punch or projectile they have joked that clearly I should pay to go on one. Aside from the fact that I'm a natural redhead city slicker who wears dark sunglasses for 11 months of the year and can't function in temperatures above 22C, the idea of spending a "holiday" pandering to the desires of the male submissive gaze makes me vomit slightly in my mouth.

On the one hand, it's nice to know that people recognise my style of domination as being basically the antithesis of this. On the other, it's a ghastly pain that images and scenarios like this one remain the mainstay of femdom. When we think about female domination these are the pictures we paint for ourselves. And with a small handful of glorious exceptions such as Ms Tytania it is the kind of femdom that is on offer. A vicious circle. This is what femdom looks like, therefore to be a female dominant you need to look like this.

Rossetti and I are drinking endless cups of coffee and pondering this problem. It's part of a wider issue of female sexuality and sexual agency, which is reliant upon male approval and projections of generic male desire which means tits-out, blowjob lips, long legs, long hair. You know what it looks like. It's the same in the BDSM world except covered (well, sort of covered, more exposed, really) in latex.

The same can often be said for styles of female submission (and to be honest if it weren't for collars I'd struggle to tell female subs and female doms apart sometimes). The look is everything, and the look is all about displaying the goods. We hit upon the Queen/princess dynamic which is similar to virgin/whore. The "sexy female" within BDSM is either a Queen or a princess. She is beautiful, superficially powerful or important but above all she needs a man to complete her.

Now, as I've said regarding male submission, presenting what is on offer is an important part of signalling availability and desire to play. But it's just the cover of the book, and especially with domination where elements of mystery and power come to the fore, then presentation should not be everything.

We dress to impress and I understand that, but the more images I see the more I realise that it is all the same. All of it. So far from representing ourselves we are covering up in layers of looking like everyone else. There are minor variations in colour of skin and hair, maybe. The same-ness of it is worrying on many levels. It seems that there is little room for personality or unique style within femdom. The "look" is so ubiquitous it raises the suspicion that it is all about the looks and nothing to do with, well, domination - by which I mean a power exchange between one individual and another.

Lots of women wear the stereotypical femdom outfits. Why do we do this - let's be clear, I will sometimes dress in a deliberately sexy femdom way. I might be doing it for effect, for irony or because I think the situation requires it. But I'm still doing it. Still using it to exert sexual power by playing on social perceptions of what I should look like in order to be attractive. In all honesty, we will probably never know whether we are doing this because we want to or because we think we should. It's a difficult thing to unpick, it requires a high level of personal honesty and it's almost impossible to strip yourself completely out of the societal and cultural pressures around you. It also cuts to the heart of what we mean by "dominance" and how "being dominant" sits with "looking dominant."

Here's another one. We talk a lot about the "male gaze" within feminism. This isn't saying that men are causing women to look like this, in fact I rather suspect that the "male gaze" is something that is taught to men, just as "this is what femdom looks like" is taught to women. Men find that look attractive because they have been instructed to find it attractive by the constant and persistent use of these images as associated and representative of female sexuality.

Messy, isn't it? So, how to un-mess it.

Rossetti, myself and other members of The Ladies Who constantly marvel at the level of attention given to how femdom should look rather than how femdom could look - how women could express sexual desire in different ways. Going further, there is shockingly little discussion of how femdom could be, in terms of what that desire entails and what skills are needed to get there. This morning we acknowledged how hard it is to ask for help or mentoring as a female dominant, that you don't want to be seen as weak or inexperienced for fear of being patronised or seen as not very good. Despite the fact that everyone has something to learn. And that there's always room to go over the basics. We can support each other in this. In getting the skills, and in being able to ask for the skills, to be a dominant and not relying on simply looking like one.

Individually we can certainly make inroads into the "looking" part as well. Me, I wear boys pants, combats and vest tops as often as I sport cute dresses, doc marten boots and knives in my anime cartoon bag. Each of us can wear what the hell we want and be as dominant in our pajamas as we are in latex catsuits. We can also support each other in doing this, and that includes making room for traditional femdom attire without dismissing it as stereotypical. I will struggle at this, but I'll try if you try to see me in my shirt and trousers as just as sexy and dominant as the lady in the pretty corset. That goes for everyone, incidentally, men, women, submissives, dominants and you lovely, filthy switches.

Like the emperor and his invisible clothes (an interesting parable on power in and of itself), the more we look at the dominant and the less we look at their clothes the better we might all be.

Playing with masculinity - Daddy and boy

This post is about personas and the fantasies they come from and create. It's about the kind of roles I adopt and channel within my dominance, but also my life. I am quite clear within myself that these states of being are not "alternative personalities" as such. Nor are they characters or games to play. It is strongly linked to The Doll Project, yet very much a dominant variant. The personas are an assemblage of thoughts, feelings and desires that are all part of the complete me. But just as one day I might be feeling "happy" so too I can spend a day feeling "boyish". Gender as an emotion.

Recently I'm veering further and further into masculine modes of power and sexuality. I've long known that my looks allow me to flirt heavily with presentations of androgyny and masculinity but there's a point where you realise that it's not about dress-up. There's more going on. Much more.

Let's take it from the top, because this is going to get complicated. There's a healthy amount of female Daddy play in the scene I inhabit, a Goldilocks just-right quantity to make it common enough so I don't have to explain myself with footnotes, but rare enough to stand out as a unique feature. Naturally, I have to be special. But it's not about doing something because no-one else does. That's nice, but the real joy has been in finding a mode of play that feels, well, normal.

Take clothes, for instance. I'm a tomboy. This rubs up against a lot of notions of how I should present myself as a dominant and a woman. I like to have a lot of useful space between myself and images / archetypes of traditional female dominance, many of which hold very little appeal to me and in fact are often downright off putting.

Daddy doesn't dress up, or at least, not in anything that I don't feel absolutely comfortable and very much "me" in (more thoughts on dominance and clothes are here). I wear a lot of vest tops. They show off my arms nicely and the shape of the clothes is often quite key to feeling in the right head-space. Some mornings I wake up femme and have to wear a dress or skirt. These days I'm more and more masculine.

I like Daddy play a lot, it fits in well with a lot of my dominant qualities. The "firm but fair" attitude, protection and patronage, strength tempered with care. Daddy knows best. The ways of being and doing I find quite easy - a coaching attitude, kindly but steely. The D/s writes itself. The challenge I'm finding (interestingly) is in S&M and sexualised play. For some reason fucking feels strange. It might be because one of the people I'm playing with is very new to me and also female. Sex always comes much later in those relationships. Perhaps due to my sexual (fucking) experiences being weighted heavily towards men, my play experience however contains a lot more women - I can still quite easily separate the two and for me a good D/s session can often be better than "straight" fucking, which has it's own pleasurable intimacy but nothing like the power trip and frisson that a strong pain scene can offer, for example.

So far, so sadistic. And pain-delivery actions such as beatings, especially spanking and other types of CP come quite easily to the Daddy persona. It allows me to put my hands all over their bodies (which I enjoy) without stripping down myself - which in a way would shatter the illusion. I may have a lean and muscular female body but it is still very obviously female. And part of me wants to keep the mystery going for as long as possible. The clothing also keeps a power imbalance going - I keep clothed, they are stripped. That said, it's not actually terribly serious. I laugh when I do it and Daddy is a fun role to play, there's a joy to it, in the way it operates, which I'm still finding out a lot about and these are just my first real responses. I'm looking forward to seeing where it might take me. Already I can see a lot of possibilities. For example, despite the common assumption of Daddy-little-girl it's also something I can see myself enjoying doing with boys as well both boys as boys and girls dressed as boys - I told you it was going to get complicated.

Now I've mentioned boys, there's a flip-side to dominant masculinity. I love playing the role of a sexualised male predator. Specifically a sleazy, nasty teenage boy predator. This role has no problem with fucking, and indeed seems to require rather a lot of it. As cruel as Daddy is kind, as selfish as Daddy is supportive. He is a nasty piece of work. I am really rather fond of him. Like the boy your mother always warned you about, he has a kind of glamour to him. I find it interesting that I want to be him, to use this model to fuck other people with. Particularly men. Particularly nice, well brought up young men of the sort who might have flirted with homosexuality but never found the right, gamine-faced boy to take them there.

What is it about this that works? I'm tempted to snicker and say what is it about this that doesn't work? But that would be the teenage boy talking. It sparked alive (very brightly) when I went to the cinema with Mr Smith and Dandy. I found myself walking between them, they were both dapper and well-turned out in suits, looking suave from days in the office. I was in jeans, a boy's T-shirt with an Atari logo and trainers. I felt for all the world like the teenage son of two gay dads. Incest fantasies and 90s pop band references aside the sensation was powerful, funny, sexual and very, very attractive. The liberation and gender/sexual fuckery of all those tropes within three bodies that I felt I knew well (theirs and mine). It was quite a rush. And one I'd rather like to consummate at some point. Somehow. Maybe not with those two as the compatability only really exists in my head.

I've made a partial start, spending yesterday morning in vest top and comic-book patterned y-fronts shaking my arse seductively in the general direction of a slightly paternal (and slightly disarmed) Mr Smith. It was a strange but pleasant switch-y moment, albeit very topping from the bottom to get him back into bed and entertaining me. It's also a move which signals a pleasant step-change in our relationship, that I can express my other types of desires, especially for the more rough and tumble sort of kinky sex, without feeling as if I'm loosing my dominant belle dame sans merci cool. Replacing it with the lithe limbed and frisky hipped cool of a yet-to-be-named teenager.

Ladies Night

I have a confession to make. Until last week, I'd never been to a hen night before. I have been to and enjoyed stag parties, with their focus on curries, running around, drinking heavily and baying at the moon. Hen nights, however, less so. Amongst my vanilla friends I am somewhat infamous for my "excuses" to get out of them. For whatever reason, they hit all my dislike buttons and I need to battle with English politeness rules in order to negotiate my way out of a social corner.

It's a combination of many things. First, it is almost certainly going to be an all-women event with women who I do not know and therefore am not prepared to deal with. Following an exceptionally ugly teenage tenure of being bullied I still retain a certain twitchiness around other, unfamiliar women. In my day-to-day life I can deal with this by simply ignoring them and living in a bubble of various types of superiority (justified or not, I'll leave that to you). I can, of course, flash the charm when I need to, but generally, and especially in situations where I have no real interest in either the people or what we are doing I don't. I'm selfish - I have a limited amount of time in this world and only want to do things that are fun, amusing or interesting. Which brings me on to the activity. These do tend towards the kind of ostentatiously public girly activity that I general avoid like spa days and cupcake icing. I prefer to keep both personal grooming and baking as private indulgences. And finally, in the interest of being crushingly honest, there is the element of sour grapes: not only am I not the centre of attention, but the reason that I am not is because someone else has found the love of their life and they are having a massive party to celebrate. Naturally this will rankle with any exhibitionist.

It was with a quantity of interest, therefore, that I received an invitation to appear at a kinky hen night organised by two new acquaintances. There is a certain element of what goes on tour, stays on tour about such events, which does clash a little with my usual internet honesty. With that in mind, and with the fact that I know how salacious (and saleable, we decided we could have funded the entire wedding based on a pay-per-view webcam stream of the night) the idea of a dozen kinky women, clad in their underwear, in an apartment somewhere in London must be I can hardly avoid writing about it.

The plan was to offer "sex education" to the hen - who I had never met. This instantly dissolved the issue of the irksome activity and on one level it felt very much like a private performance gig, which, combined with the fact that I had been selected to attend, indulged my ego to the extent that I was very keen to attend. Clearly, this was the way to make hen nights palatable, in fact, once the day came around I was excited, enjoying spending the few days prior planning what kit and what sort of play I would offer. I didn't know who was going to be there or what level of kink they would be up for. Whatever I did, it needed to have an element of showomanship, group participation and also be easy to access with the opportunity to ramp up to eleven should said access prove too easy. That meant pallet wrap and a violet wand together with their "natural" accessories: pinwheel, point metal objects, glass dildo and vibrator.

Because I didn't know who else was going I was unsure what precisely to expect, so I initially planned to arrive, do my thing and then take the last tube home. I'm glad that was one of the several assumptions that was subverted in the course of the night. There is a myth, supported by almost all forms of media, that women gathering together will watch romantic comedies, drink bad white wine, discuss tampons and men, eat too much ice-cream and then have a gentle, giggling feather falling pillow-fight whilst clad in their bra and pants. There will be bitching, crying and someone will vomit and need their hair holding back whilst over the bathroom. I can confirm this myth to be untrue, at least in kinky circles. There was alcohol, of course, served in pretty tea cups and saucers. We did discuss "women's things", though not tampons. We talked about our relationships, our loves and lovers, coming out to our parents, being queer and not being queer. And yes, there was a lot of lacily clad flesh on display once the latecomers had received their forfeits and the night was officially underway. No-one was hit by a pillow.

After we had all delivered our "advice" to the hen, who now ranks as one of the most glamorous women I have ever seen in the flesh (and what flesh, the range of amazing bodies on display was one of my favourite moments of the evening) the night started to warm up. I took the violet wand upstairs to prepare a space on the bed and soon had a mattress full of giggling women who wanted electrocuting. Feeling like the mad scientist I have never trained to be but can mimic quite entertainingly I ran through the different attachments and power levels, having a lot of sadistic glee over the way that the shocks travelled through adjacent body parts. From there different sorts and styles of play emerged and one of the things I enjoyed was simply lying back and watching. Whether it was seeing someone suffer from an extended period of clothes-peg torture, then holding them still as they were wrenched off, feeling my heart leap as the tears came (I do love tears) or listening to the growls and curious animal gasps from red stripes of pain caused by a misery stick - a thin plastic wand for flicking at skin. I made a mental note to get several of those. We also engaged in some make-and-do by mummifying one of the guests as a present for the hen - mummification is always so much easier when you have friends to help you.

Eventually, after a slow taxi ride home with the hen, still looking extraordinary, in the pale, white morning light I fell into bed at some point around 6am. Grinning madly to myself and looking forward to booking in plenty of future dates with my new friends, as well as hopefully introducing them to The Ladies Who. Another step forward in world domination, I feel.

Penetrating gender

Lying in bed next to Mannequin, arms wrapped around her, pulling her slight frame into mine and pressing my thigh between her legs. I want to fuck her, to be able to take her, penetrate her with a part of myself.

What I absolutely did not want to do was have to leave the nice warm girl in the nice warm bed, wander around in the dark until I found the strap-on harness, put it on, find a dildo, put it in the harness and then get back into bed. That would, as one might put it, rather ruin the moment. I want to slide inside her, seamless, perfect, without pause or reflection. To casually reach over and have what is mine as easily as picking up a glass and lifting it to your lips to savour the taste of wine within.

It's not, let's be clear here, penis envy. Either in the psycho-sexual or practical realms. I don't want flesh as such, or to swap this body for a boy's (well, maybe for a day...). It was very much about the impromptu desire, the need to do it there and then without recourse to kit. I don't want a cock as a permanent fixture it just would have been handy right then. And neither do I want one as a demonstration or emblem of power: as a dominant, I already have the power that freudian analysis attributes to that oft over-inflated member.

As I thought about this more, it became muddier. Because I also felt that this need was "masculine", yet I feel the same kind of drive towards my male submissives - if anything, the desire expresses itself as more aggressive, less seductive, more forceful and certainly more violently physical. How did that work? After all I don't perceive them as "feminine" in fact they are very masculine men. To compound this, I realised that when my dominance is in full flight and I'm seeing the world through dom-space, I do not view Mannequin as the feminine (although she is a very beautiful woman) receiver to this "masculine" desire to penetrate.

They are my submissives. They are amazing bodies that I own and want to express that ownership in a very, very physical way. Thus the tropes of masculinity that I am sensing are the hangovers of a society that conflates masculine with dominance. Those particular elements within the sensations and desires that I am experiencing feel "masculine" because in my mind all the words around the act of penetration are associated with masculinity: force, power, thrust, take. I spent a lot of my submissive journey trying to unpick the associations of femininity and submission and how that sat with my tomboyish self. I expect that there is a similar reconciliation to be done here with dominance and gender.

As an addendum, and flirting in the same territory, I played a trick on Mr Smith over the weekend, lying on my back and coyly encouraging him to fuck me, missionary style. He couldn't. Poor thing. Arms around my shoulders, cock inside me but he knew something wasn't right and his body responded accordingly. He became tense and awkward as the mixed signals competed for attention. Even as I made him describe how it felt, made him think about things that were in deliberate contrast to his desire to submit, I could feel him slip away. There was a look of relief and (eventually, when I'd had enough) release after I'd pushed him onto his back to ride him.

Fucking him in both positions gave me the sensation of "penetration" even though, technically, he was penetrating me. The precise physicality of fucking doesn't seem to matter. Context is everything. Because he associated missionary style, boy-on-top with a more powerful mode of behaviour, for him, it didn't work. His penetration of me did not make him dominant towards me, but my dominant feelings towards him meant that I could still feel that way even with him on top, because I was in control. All the more so because he was struggling with the situation.

When we fuck, the connection created by our bodies is a channel through which runs the power exchange. Like electricity through wire. Making everything light up. It is the D/s balance I have between myself and my partners that mediates the way the fucking feels: the push and pull of owner and owned. It isn't about who behaves like a boy and who behaves like a girl, although those are certainly masks we can wear. It's about who takes and who gives.

Deep down, this has been something I've known for a long, long time. Even right back when I was in vanilla relationships it was always the (kinky) images and ideas of control in my mind that informed my experience of sexual pleasure. Now I have the power to make those fantasies of into realities, whilst wearing whatever attributes of any gender I choose.

No sex please, we're women

It's not often I'm moved beyond my own sphere of personal indulgences and contemplations to discuss the political, except where I feel it is treading heavily on my turf. This is one of those times. Nadine Dorries - harridan of the conservative party and general hater of all things fun - proposed a bill to teach abstinence in schools, but only to girls aged 13-16.

Now, the "reasoning" behind such a blatantly sexist move is precisely the sort of backwards thinking I would have expected from that corner of the House of Commons: it purports to have a socially useful function but the narrow range required for its execution will succeed only in increasing the blame for unwanted sexual activity, and its consequences, onto young women.

Thus, Dorries follows in a grand tradition of pointing the finger at female sexuality as something that needs to be controlled and managed for the good of society and the "protection" of women. There's a long history of considering cunt as the antithesis of all that is good and pure and I am heartily sick of it. We need to stop creating virgin and whore dichotomies and look beyond the crass and unfair media depictions of single mothers, lesbians, prostitutes driving down property values on "our streets" or those unmarried young women going out and enjoying their lives instead of settling down and breeding the next generation (within the context of wedlock, naturally).

I was dismayed to see that MPs (narrowly) passed the bill at its first reading despite a very well thought out and detailed rebuttal from Chris Bryant. That, together with this article in the Guardian outline all of the issues and pitfalls with the a bill in some detail. Both suggest much better alternatives to tackle what are real problems, starting from the shocking idea that we should perhaps teach boys as well as girls to say no to sex. I wonder when will we start accepting that men have an equal place in sexual responsibility and treating them in an equitable and respectful manner rather than automatically assuming they have no existence beyond their raging hormones or that they are all only after one thing? The hideous stereotyping of the genders is shocking, and I'm concerned at just how many of our elected representatives must view the world in this light for the bill to have passed this stage.

To be clear, I don't have an issue with teaching abstinence. I think that learning how to say "no" to sex should form a part of everyone's sex education: whatever their gender. But it should be part of a total discussion of the physical, emotional and psychological experience of any (and all) kinds of sexual activity. After all, how can someone make a decision when they are lacking in the facts? Blindly saying "no" can be as bad as blindly saying "yes", and encourages people to focus on the damaging and negative parts of sexuality, without an understanding of its pleasures.

Fuck back in anger

In my travels through Kinksville, I've been all kinds of horny, but rarely angry at the same time. The closest I can remember is experiencing a pent up sexual frustration with Captain, about a year ago. That was a submissive need to be used, to be taken, to be fucked: to have an emptiness filled. This was almost precisely the reverse.

I was at a club, with Mannequin and a number of The Collective. We were very much in public and something in me had just snapped. I needed to use, to take, to fuck. To let all my frustration and annoyance boil over inside me and vent out into someone else's body. It wasn't passion, or sexual desire as such, it was about power. I absolutely needed to exert myself over her. Not play, certainly not my usual, planned, coolly methodical and detailed play.

Every single part of me was screaming out to do something violent. I was vaguely aware, through the heat of it, of an audience and could maintain a certain dark humour to the edge in my voice thanks to the role - I was taking the part of a military rakish cad, and she was my doxy. I barked for kit -for all the kit, any of the kit. And for my girl who was in easy reach, although her corset made me wish I'd bought it for her so I could just take a knife, cut the fiddly cords and throw the thing over my shoulder.

I pushed her down, hard against the bed, pulling off the rest of her clothes and unbuckling the thick leather belt from my waist, feeling the heavy weight of it against my hands. I hit her raised bottom with it, feeling her jerk back a little. That felt good. More than good. It felt right. There was something about the whole combination - my savage urges, her willingness to accept them. Even how we both looked enhanced the mood: her vulnerable and feminine in strips of lacy cotton, me strapped down and boyish in white vest, braces, big black boots. I looked and felt like an utter bastard and was relishing every moment.

A few blows with the belt and that was as close to foreplay as I got. Dildo went in the strap-on harness I'd fortunately had the presence of mind to put on before leaving the house. Lube. Condom. Her cunt. Fucking. Fucking until my legs were tired of fucking and I needed to drag her into an alcove and procure Boy Wonder to fuck her against the cold, dirty brick. Not til she was satisfied, but until I was.

Thinking back, there was nothing nice about what I did. Ringmaster turned around to me later and said "That wasn't for her. That was for you." He was right. It was about use. About what I wanted, and what I took. Like pounding the pavement on a hard run following a bad day, there's an exhilaration in getting it out, but also a self-centered-ness. Something you do for yourself.

It wasn't even about an urge to hurt her specifically - in the sort of mood I was in I'd have ripped or punched any soft target. Hurting her was better than hurting anyone else though. Safer and more satisfying. Not only because I knew my passion would fall on appreciative ground, but because she wasn't the cause of my frustration - she wasn't being punished. I was using her to make me feel better. And that was what we both wanted.

The day after, sated, tired. I lay in the sunshine on her lap and she fed me grapes. I've got an email in my inbox full of appreciation for what I did. The thrill of behaving like that and getting thanked for it.

I am a lucky bastard, and no mistake.

Who's your Daddy?

Boots. Sharp trousers. White shirt. Gold signet ring. No makeup. Wide stances. Wandering hands. Reaching up to feel someone's bottom, groping. Handing out drinks, grinning like a bastard and saying "who's your Daddy?". Feeling up pretty girls and boys with little differentiation, when I'm feeling like this, dressed like this, behaving like this, their actual gender is irrelevant, only the fact that they beautiful and that they are on one level or another my bitches.

I've been experimenting more and more with my masculinity of late, and it's making me rather pleased with myself. That I can express this side, and feel comfortable, powerful, sexy and happy in doing so is a testament to the people around me. It also an acknowledgement of my own development. Like my switch-self, there is a queer self which encompasses masculinity as a natural bedfellow with my androgyny, my womanhood, my kink and my cultural background.

In the past I've been nervous about expressing either my femininity or my masculinity. When younger, I often felt gawkish and out of place as if I was neither one thing nor the other. I wasn't brought up as particularly feminine - a fact I am extremely grateful to my parents for. I was a tomboyish kid with the endless bruised and scraped knees of a childhood growing up on a street with no "little girls" so constantly falling out of trees or off bicycles. We got a lot of hand-me-downs and from those I was allowed to chose my own toys and clothes. I was never forced to dress in girly outfits and that together with my short hair and Tonka Truck obsession meant that I was often taken for a boy outside of school (there was a ghastly skirt and hat uniform). At school, with its clear, gender defined lines my fledgling identity was put into crisis.

I remember losing the boys as friends when I grew a little older: they were encouraged to play less and less with girls by their deeply sexist (I can see that now) parents. I became marooned on Girl Island. The games that girls played were strange and odd to me - composed of cliques, secret languages and power plays that would make the cruelest psychological dominant blanch. Each day was spent working out where you stood in a shifting social order of who was best friends with who, something I was spectacularly poor at. I still hankered after male companionship, made less and less easily accessible with the onset of puberty and my lack of conventional feminine attractiveness. I was stuck in the middle at a time and place where there was no middle ground.

A common term of abuse thrown at me was "boygirl" because I had no female friends. There was a lot of bullying, of that uncertain kind where you know you are excluded and you know people are being horrible to you but because no-one is actually calling you names or pushing you in puddles it's hard to quantify, much less tell anyone. Eventually I told someone and then spent the next few years being steadfastly ignored alternating with frustrating periods of trying to "fit in" with other girls including bouts of controlled eating patterns until finally, eventually, and with the escape velocity that comes from leaving home and going to University (thanks to a thoughtful and well prepared Grandfather who calculated the cost of the education he never had) I realised that fitting in was a dreadful, soul crushing compromise. The better plan was to work out who I was and to enjoy it.

And that's a work in progress.

I'm still finding the language of masculinity a challenge, especially when it comes to kink. Uncertain whether I am merely playing with the master's toolbox and in essence, supporting the system of "naturalised" Mf assumptions and prejudices deeply prevalent in the scene. I adopt masculine language patter and use feminine subservient terms such as "bitches", riffing off gangsters old and new, and also in part that marvellous scene in Elizabeth The Golden Age, which I really enjoyed for its presentations of the challenges of being female and being in power.

I solace myself by remembering that whilst masculinity, and the words that surround it, sits well with dominance it is only because they are both perceived as synonyms for power. In fact, masculinity is a socially constructed mode of behaviour rather than simply the biological happenstance of "being male". There is no reason that having a certain set of chromosomes should mean one is especially given to operating on a particular side in sexual games of power or control except that we train boys to be masculine (dominant) and girls to be feminine (subservient). Our upbringing and education system is practically a pink/blue caste system in which we separate everyone into girls and boys and raise them into male and female irrespective of the sorts of people they are. We are also taught that the two are unbreakable binaries: that to be feminine means you are emasculated, to be masculine is to be unfeminine.

The truth of the matter is that "masculine" and "feminine" are just models of presentation or performance consisting of many fine strands of behaviours, ways of seeing and doing. I feel at my most comfortable in jeans, tshirts and trainers. Even now, either hyper femme or very butch I feel as if I'm "dressing up". I've learnt over time to enjoy being playful with these roles rather than getting sucked into social anxieties of contrived gender impulses.

It also helps that the more I break out my boyishness the more I seem to turn those around me into blushing masses of uncertainty and excitement.

Beholder

Those who say that cameras steal the soul have not been photographed by Rossetti. Every click nourishes my ego, my vanity and I return home having scrolled through glimpses of her captures feeling like I'm walking on clouds. Seen through the lens, seen through someone else's eyes my body is a canvas for the play of light and shadow. It becomes a thing of beauty, I become a piece of art.As confident a swagger and bright a mood as if I'd just had a play session.

Perhaps there are similarities. Planning and executing a photo shoot is not dissimilar from running a scene: set up needs to be done, consideration given to physicality (if anything I am more body-focused before a shoot than before a scene, when playing I am in motion, in control and in flux, when photographed I am static and the results will last for longer. The power play is more subtle than garish tales of casting couches but it is there nonetheless. I present myself for the consumption of the camera and my body tells stories with the shapes it casts in the light. There is an intimacy to it, as she moves and poses me - doll like - into just the right position for each shot. The odd command: "stay right there" or exclamation "beautiful".

One of the advantages of androgyny is a playing with a chameleon palette of gender and sexuality. We did two main sets, both of which are designed to capture my androgyny and the contrast of curves and cut in my physique. The first was a geisha style shot, full white makeup and slicked back darkened hair with skin revealed around a descending kimono. I clasped my hands to my chest, fingers hidden in long sleeves, to create a line that might have been breasts or might have been pectoral muscles. My shoulders and back are now defined enough under good light to cause a second glance, and I hoped to capture some of the expression of Onngata or perhaps a "forced feminisation".

The second was a series of nudes. I wanted "muscle" shots to capture the definition and sculpting that I've been working so hard on for something like the past two years. This was my first set of styled studio nudes for a long time, we try to work with more classical "masculine" poses so I end up flexing and tensing a lot to get the best out of my shape. This one was more focused on lines and angles than on a story as such so we set up with dark fabrics for background contrast and well trained light to pick out the edges of my muscles.

I love the act of being photographed. Spending a day getting in and out of costume and makeup and running through different poses and portraits is a luxury: photos capture moments stolen from the real world, in which I can be glamorous and untouchable, beautiful and unreal. It is also a performance, and I always enjoy slipping out of myself and adopting a role. I once had a rather rude comment on some dating website that the photos I'd uploaded couldn't possibly be of the same person. I was quite proud of that and took it as an unwitting (there was little witty about the turn of phrase used) compliment: that I have that flexibility in presentation. There is pleasure in this kind of masquerade. Yes, I dissemble to perform and yet no lie is ever completely dishonest. There are grains of truth in each post I adopt. I take a portion of myself that I want to express and the idea is held it in place with each click of the button.

Photographs are not merely private games to idle away a rainy day or a tool to massage my ego after a week of minor (and major) irritations. They are marks of progress and reminders for my future when I no longer look like this. They are also collaborations that I am proud of, something I have made of myself, for myself - like my body and my life, they represent the control I have over my identity and sense of self. And of course, they are beautiful things in and of themselves.

Doing girls

"Why do you play with girls?"

A question I ponder every now and then, especially in conversations with Majeste. Something that struck me once again, last night over dinner with a prospective new (female) play partner. We discussed the anxieties and challenges of forming connections and meaningful relationships with women. We both have poor experiences of women, well, girls, from our school days. The sort of ongoing, oppressively vindictive, back-stabbing campaigns of fair weather friends, lies, secrets and bitchy bullying that never made its way into Mallory Towers. The conceit, often expressed and supported by society at large that women are "not nice" or "out to get you." There is a belief that women are unable to co-operate, certainly not with each other, and that women will lie to your face then smile about it. We did joke that men were also often out to get you, they just were more open and honest about it.

So how can that formulate into the desire to play with women? For her, it was because she finds women attractive, more so than men. For me it is part of an ongoing process over the years of Dealing With Women. The first step is making friends with women: aside from a couple of close friends from my University days most of my friendships have been with men. The Ladies Who have been a fundamental part of this, they have taught me how to relate to women as a grown-up, not as a schoolgirl, they have also taught me what adult sexual exploration and friendship can look like. They have taught me to appreciate and understand female flesh and female company without feeling awkward or out of place, or wondering where the catch is. And that women in a group can be powerful, supportive of each other and neither catty nor fluffy. I owe them rather a lot, come to think of it.

Because I enjoy bodies and because variety in bodies is an important part of my development as a dominant, women are an important part of my nutritionally balanced sexual diet. On one hand, that does sound rather callous, as if I am including people solely as "tick box" participants in my own personal experiments. There is a little of that, perhaps, but I still find them attractive, it's just I'm currently stearing towards variety in a deliberate quest to understand more about myself, my play and BDSM in general. First and foremost I find particular people attractive, regardless of their gender. At the moment, I have a reasonably fifty fifty balance of male and female partners. What they have in common is me, and that they are striking in some way: beautiful and different.

Language makes a bid to be noticed in my conversations surrounding gender and dominance. For example, I will use the word "girls" specifically in the sense that my male submissive partners are "boys". In almost any other context I would avoid calling a woman a girl. A diminutive makes them softer, more open, a little less-than but with the emphasis on the kinds of support and input they require from me. Perhaps it also makes them less scary? By making women my de-personified, sexual toys they do not cause any of the anxieties I might otherwise hold. On the other hand, I do the same thing with "boys" rather than "men". The linguistic knack of making smaller is a common trope for all sorts of power plays, and is a dominant feature rather than a "playing with women" feature.

The discussion turned naturally toward sexual and kinky identity and the difficulty of labels when one finds people attractive as people, rather than as male, female, gay or straight. I'm not gay. I'm not really bisexual in the sense that when in those rare moments when I imagine my future life partner they are male. I've taken to identifying as queer because it covers the multitude of sins, personal and political, that I like to indulge in whilst also clearly stating "not straight". I'm also prone to outbursts of masculinity and androgyny at the same time as being absolutely comfortable and, certainly in the past couple of years, confident in my female body.

As reminded by Hedwig today, the gender-flip/queer aspect is quite heavy in my play. I wondered briefly whether I dominate girls as a woman or as a man, but then remembered I hold equally powerful masculine submissive fantasies, that centered around being the teenage male bottom. I think it is possible that my flexibility on this front is what enables me to enjoy playing with such a variety of people in different ways, it's certainly something that Spirit has mentioned when we've discussed how our power dynamic might operate.

Ultimately, I am a queer woman. Sitting in the middle. Playing with that which takes my fancy in ways that utilise power tropes drawn from all angles of the gender sphere.

As my thoughts meandered around, I started to feel that my presupposed and perceived differences between dominating women rather than dominating men were actually few, far between and relatively superficial when compared to the difference between dominating person A and person B. Eventually, I boiled it down to two clear, discernable differences between my feelings about playing with men and playing with women. One is familiarity. I have much more experience with male bodies. Women's bodies are still new and strange to me, despite having one of my own - and I am slowly, slowly learning that my own remembered sensations are not always the best guidelines for how someone else might respond. This makes women both nerve wracking and also exciting.

The second is about switching. I find it a lot easier to dominate women than to submit to them, which is interesting. I've had a lot of fun bottoming to women - Spiral springs to mind rather ferociously, as is her wont, ditto Rossetti. But being dominated was always a psychological and emotional challenge. Having thought about it for quite a long time, I'm convinced that the major stumbling block in my sexual relationship with Majeste was that the submissive that I was then just didn't sit at all well, with her very clear and strong sense of femaleness which went hand in hand with her dominance. What I'm not sure about is why this might be.

Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps on some subconscious level, part of me is still anxious about how I relate to women, especially emotionally. By remaining dominant towards them I maintain control and therefore safe. And with even more "perhaps-ing" involved could the fact that, in my mind's eye, I do not view women as potential future life partners mean that the deep-down emotional connection that is part of my submission is wary of them or entirely absent?

I'm very uncertain about these sorts of ideas - they strike me as explanations or reasons for something that is basically unreasonable: desire. They are also based on a very low sample of the human population: those people I've fucked. It's fair to say that actually I find relatively few people attractive and even less of those people are kinky or interested in me. Plus, I'm still exploring. Just because I have yet to develop a serious emotional attachment to either a woman or, to date, a submissive (of any gender) doesn't mean I won't.

Time will tell. In the meantime, more input required.

Boys (not) playing

At a private house party recently my (uncomfortable) high heels gave me much opportunity to sit down and watch the assembled company and how they interacted. What interested me especially was how quickly and keen the women were to get involved in BDSM play compared to the men. The women were by far being the most tactile, the most obviously available and actively interested in playing - at one point I had two very good looking women kneeling at my feet and another in my lap wriggling happily underneath my teeth. There were boys there who I would have happily played with and who I am sure would have liked to play, but they were clothed, in another room, talking to another boy about football (OK, I made the last bit up, but you get the picture).

The most obvious signifier of this "women only" situation was that the only naked people I witnessed were women. The men for the most part, were fully clothed, often talking to each other at the sidelines, except for those who, also fully clothed, were playing with their female partners.

Now, because I know that there were submissive men present who were interested in playing and didn't; I am intrigued as to why they were uncomfortable, unwilling or unable to express their desire as clearly as the women. This got me thinking. What is it about our group, our society or our gendered ideas about presenting sexuality that makes it easy for submissive women to make themselves available for play and hard for submissive men? For the record I'm specifically focusing on submissives for the moment because I was able to draw direct comparisons between the sexes that evening. There is a massive difference in expectations of presentation, and difficulties in attracting casual play partners for male and female dominants, but I'll just have to blog about that later, so watch this space.

Taking the most obvious point first: we are much more used to seeing representations of unclothed women than we are men. We (I'm talking about western culture here) are fairly well conditioned into being comfortable with the sight of female flesh, especially as meaning "sexually available". The connection between naked or provocatively clad women and consumption is, sadly, a much ingrained trope. Naked men are often viewed as dangerous or threatening, rather than attractive sexual offerings - unless they are gay. In which case they can be perceived as dangerous in quite another way. When considering the classic heterosexual "attractive" male they are almost always rich, powerful and clothed.

Naked men are a rarity: their naked torsos do not grace the third page of the country's best selling red top and their legs don't flash up in adverts for cereal. On a night out in any town centre, the average woman will be wearing less than the average man. Women find it easier to be naked and semi-clothed, or to wear revealing or provocative clothing - corsets, tight latex etc. They feel safe as well as sexy. Men are not used to doing this and are rarely seen semi-clothed or naked except in certain specific and often purely "men only" contexts. Spaces where society has stipulated an acceptable male nakedness: sports changing rooms, saunas, the beach and certain clubs.

Of course, there are exceptions, and we all know about the naked (often unattractive) man who wanders around the sex club, probably casually masturbating despite the notices on the wall. Perhaps it is fear of being that guy that stops men taking their tops off.

Another element of the "available for play" sign is demonstrated physical contact. In the situation I was in, women were touching each other and being obviously sexually open. The men were drinking beer, talking and taking sidelong looks at the girls. In my experience of BDSM I have witnessed vastly more girl-on-girl play than boy on boy.

I can only conclude that some form of socially contracted homophobia (it's a disease...) prevents them from touching each other, or of exploring each others' bodies. How many more men than women proclaim themselves straight and feign horror at the sight of another naked body similar to theirs? We live in a sexual culture that considers girls kissing girls as a normal, natural and indeed, it is an almost expected erotic staple. Yet we would not instantly think of those women as lesbians. It is viewed instead as a display piece for the attraction of men. The reverse does not happen nearly enough. Sadly. Although I am doing my best to try and turn the tide.

Summary: men just don't advertise the goods.

I realised I needed a boy's eye view. A quick IM with Dandy (my go-to-guy for chaps who take their tops off) sheds a bit of light on the subject. We chatted about how men have clothing that is generally comfortable, non-tight and does not reveal how they look, which means that on a day-to-day basis - unlike women - how their bodies look is not an issue for them. Something compounded by the fact that their worth is rarely judged on their attractiveness alone:

"Taking their clothes off suddenly means they have to acknowledge they have physiques at which point the man is subject to the most common male physical expectation which is an awesome six pack surrounded by small to large muscles. Dressed means no expectations. Naked means huge expectations."

So far, so scary. But it's a fear I can recognise, because I, and all other women are also surrounded by challenging body image expectations all the time, far more than men. Yet I do not have the same inhibitions. Why?

I think that women are perhaps more used to those body image expectations and have overcome them, either by ignoring them and/or by working damn hard to look good, to dress well and are therefore much more body conscious and ready to reveal. On a wider social level, it can be argued that women are following convention by shedding clothing, men are having to go against the grain.

In a play party scenario, men find themselves suddenly on the spot and having to be physically attractive. This is something that women have had all their lives to practice at and live under the requirement of being sexually attractive first and foremost. So they tend to be better at it - if not happier people because of it (I'd be the first to say that the focus on looks does enormous harm to women and young girls), but neither are men gaining anything in particular by totally shying away from the idea that their bodies might be conduits for desire within certain situations. Both genders have something to learn from the other.

Myself and a few ladies of my acquaintance are considering setting up a support group to help young men become comfortable with being more obviously sexually available. A doll project for boys, perhaps?

Double dolly

For a long time I have been planning a doll present for Rossetti, and finally managed to organise it at her New Year's Eve party. Spirit and I decided to double up and both present as femme dollies for her delectation. We both wore little "cutesy" dresses, knee high socks and high heels, curled hair for her and pastel hair grips for me with perfect pink circles on our cheeks. We had a brief chat with Ringmaster and waited, limbs folded over limbs, back to back and on the floor.

Sitting in silence, broken only by a couple of whispered exchanges on how to behave and act: there are many types of dolls and therefore many types of doll behaviour, our dollies were silent and mobile but stiff - limbs can be posed and will hold in place. I shared the trick of slow breathing and blinking in time to keep the cool, robotic sense of pace and pause. I like the point of waiting. The anticipation of what will happen next. I can feel my body calming down as my breathing slows, my mouth salivating slightly as my lips part and remain slack. I can feel Spirit's back against mine, warm, strong and reassuring.

"Aaah! Dollies!"

The perfect response, a delighted exclamation. Inside I smile, outside, I remind myself to be porcelain and perfect. Remote, abstracted and empty. Breathe in and out. They walk in slowly, Rossetti comes over to the pair of us and Ringmaster settles down in the background to watch.

She plays with her nails and hands. Pinching, pulling, nipping and punching. "Girls know how to hurt girls", she says later and she's right. Like myself, she takes pleasure in the intimacy of cruel touches. My legs are soon covered in a mess of red lines but I try not to be drawn in to watching her play - which is something I enjoy doing - but instead keeping my gaze glassy, focusing on the door, a point on the carpet, a screw in the wall. The pain is sharp, fresh and makes me want to gasp, but I try not to. I internalise the quick, hot rushes of slices and scratches that spark along my skin.

She alternates between the pair of us, moving us this way and that, my limbs are light and without power when she moves them, I keep them airy in her grasp, freezing them in situ when she lets go, at one point I fall over and land awkwardly, holding my arm up, fingers clawlike, grabbing at the air without motion, noise or control. I can feel her play with Spirit through the points at which our bodies connect. The twitches and resonated impacts. Without sound, it is eerie, the only vocalisation are the gasps and murmurs of delight uttered by Rossetti.

Eventually, I cave. There is only so long I can take pain without making noise, especially intermittent, sharp pain. I groan as her knuckles press hard and grate down my ribs, a sensation curious, unusual and very sore - even now a couple of days later my torso feels bruised, although it is not, sadly.

"Broken" A sad little noise, but underneath it is a note of achievement. Yes, I gave in to the feelings and went with them, hatching from my doll skin and into the vulnerable flesh beneath, but that in and of itself is part of the point of doll play, the moment where the pain becomes too much and you need to react. Spirit confided later, as we were sipping our sugary drinks and enjoying post-play hugs, that the pain actually helped her feel more submissive and enjoy the experience. She noted that the expectation of reaction, to show the top that you appreciate what is being done, can actually make the play less good - rather than relaxing and absorbing the scene, you have to leave part of your brain switched on in order to moan and groan every now and then. With dolls, the need to stay mute and in certain circumstances still, actually requires you to inhabit your body more, and the pain helps by focusing the mind and pushing you further down into yourself.

Until you break. Which you will. But that has it's pleasure too.

Romance of the Rose

An interesting discussion started to swarm on my Twitter feed (I do also exist in the real world, honestly), between Majeste, Spirit and Chiaroscuro. The sparking point for me was the phrase "feminism v. chivalry". I'm currently paddling in the shallow end of the dating pool, so I've been splashed with enough behaviour to try and unpick our ideas of modern romance and how they are touched with historic themes and motifs.

The idea of chivalric or courtly love comes to us from Eleanor of Aquitaine. There's a good post on it here, along with a dialogue on the changing meaning of the word "lady", the important two facts to note are the apparent hopeless nature of the love and the way in which the love is finally taken. Take the former first. The belle dame sans merci is plied, in secret (or semi-secret) with gifts, poetry etc that demonstrate the desire, passion and drive of her amour. Although she is ostensibly of noble stature, her power only lies in her ability to withhold or deny her lover, as soon as she is taken, physically fucked to be frank, the game is finished. The rose is deflowered.

From this we can see a number of tropes that still float around in our romantic unconsciousness. First, chivalry. This has become a code of honour of sorts, a way that men are "supposed" to behave around the object of their affections, right up to those who practice The Game, though I would hardly call the latter chivalrous. We still teach chivalry, often in the guise of "good manners" - however true politeness should probably not be as gendered as the behaviours we encounter, such as opening doors, holding out chairs, paying for drinks and dinner. They are all things that society expects men to do for women, and they are all types of gift giving, of showing strength (physical or monetary), they cast the male in the role of the provider, and - here is where it gets interesting - in the traditional role of the dominant - control is exerted by removing from the submissive the means to arrange and manage their environment.

However, there are feminine forms of chivalry, a feminine gendered romantic code and system running from the coquette through to The Rules. These ways of behaving are rarely termed "good manners" - an example of where male normative behaviour is codified as human normative behaviour - and are instead simply "flirting" or in cruder, unkinder language "prick teasing". I'm painting in very broad brushstrokes here but generally these patterns are designed to make the female appealing through emphasising softness, prettiness, weakness and reliance on the male in other words submission.

What is striking, is how these "rules" neatly dovetail into the chivalric code: the female withholds her favour (and her cunt) for as long as possible, allowing the male ample opportunity to flush his feathers (and his cash). The two sets of behaviours work with each other. Chivalry cannot happen unless the target is a coquette. You can't offer to pay for someone whose already put their card on the table and is raising an eyebrow at you. They are a power exchange that is enshrined and encouraged, in many respects by our society.

Slowly, painfully slowly, we are seeing an easing of the strict gendered nature of these romantic roles, and what do we get when we strip them bare? For a start, we can get some awkwardness. There is an internal clash of gender identities if rules "normally" ascribed to men are used by women, especially if someone has "pays for dinner" as an important part of their identity as male. Add on top of this standard British politeness rules and there's a lot of embarrassment to be had over the bill.

When we remove the gendered connotations and only look at the behaviours in terms of who is doing what to whom we get a reveal of the power exchange as a D/s dynamic. What is especially interesting, from discussions I have had with people, is that the same physical gesture can have totally different meanings. For some, if you pay for dinner you are dominant - and this would perhaps be the traditional reading of that action. However, for others, taking someone to dinner, arranging everything just so and then paying for it, is an act of submission - you have presented offerings.

Because I am kinky, I tend to see my dating patterns through the smoky coloured lenses of BDSM. This is sometimes complicated by the fact that I am a switch, so for me someone paying for the bill can be either dominant or submissive depending on my relationship to them. Equally, they could just be being nice. As a romantic and a feminist it's actually a lot easier for me to see the world like this (my problem is that other people don't), I would find it difficult if someone was buying me dinner simply because I was a woman and they, as a man, felt it expected of them, or worse, if they thought it was part of their due in order to fuck me. I tend to get around this by dating within kinky circles where I've usually fucked them before we've got to dinner (or at least played with them). Here, we can see how murky it can get, because clearly, once a D/s power exchange is established buying drinks and holding out chairs does become part of the sexual arrangement, ways in which submissives can be good or dominants can be powerful.

These sorts of actions are not as overt in the vanilla dating world, and so instead of dominant and submissive we have their poor, incorrect substitutes male and female. And that is the challenge for kinky feminists - to keep the excitement of D/s and shed the assumption of gender roles within that, leaving them as masks or toys for us to play with when we choose.

Naturally, I'm happy to discuss this further, either in the comments or over dinner. You're buying.